I am currently taking a class entitled "The Bible as Literature". The point of which is to read the Bible as literature. Meaning that we read through it and treat it like a story rather than a code of conduct. Basically, we try to decipher what exactly happens in the stories and what it tells us about the authors of each story. So instead of worrying about whether something means God wants me to be this way or that way, we concentrate on why these stories make it into the Bible. (Because not all stories proclaiming to be written about God did make it. Just like not all men proclaiming to be "prophets of God" are "true"...) Which is to say, we think of the Bible as an...anthology created by man.
This class does not, in any way, tell people what to believe or how to interpret the stories. It is more like a book club. Except we are reading the Bible. I think anyone who has taken a literature class can kind of understand what it is like... Anyway. So the point is. This idea of reading the Bible as a recreational story rather than a book of rules made me think about how that might not really change the experience... Even now, I can read these stories and draw from them morals and ideas about life. I can interpret the motives behind the actions of the character God and relate them to real life. But I can do the same thing with say...Harry Potter or Withering Heights or Moby Dick or any book ever written. Hell. Any story ever told, poem ever read, movie ever seen, song ever heard. I can experience these things and relate them to real life. Learn from the lives of the characters within them and apply that lesson to my life. Which is the same thing so many people do with the Bible.
What seems to set the Bible apart from these things is time and the character God. The fact that all the stories in the Bible are so old, with origins so far removed from our knowledge, gives them the power of mystery, which is to say, the power of our imagination filling in the blanks. In addition to this, the actions of the character God are read, by most, as being the real life actions of the person they pray to everyday. To them, he is not a character but a real person. When I was 11, I wrote in a diary everyday and addressed each passage to Harry Potter. Are these two things really so different? To me, he was a real person (or I wanted him to be), but really he was just a character in a story, but what he stood for, for me and what I learned from him would shape the person I would become. Much as the Bible does once people reach an age that they can truly understand it.
Now. I am not saying that Harry Potter is my Bible. So do not go off getting that impression. What I am saying is that it is possible that every story of value ever written is just as important and sacred as the Bible. Because what it comes down to is that writers are taught to write about real life. Regardless of how many fantastical layers you put on a story, there is still real life behind it. Voldemort is a murderer of muggles. Hitler was a murderer of Jewish people. Stories must always say something about real life. (That is the rule my creative writing teachers keep hammering into my head.) And just as we learn from real life we, draw morals from the lives of the people in the Bible, because they are based on real life. But I am willing to bet you could also find a true lesson about life from that new movie Inception for the same reason.
Despite what religion you subscribe to. I think there has to be something to be said about the idea that all Biblical stories, all modern stories, and everything in between are equally important, because they are all rooted in the human experience and...ultimately the human conscience (given to you by your creator). They are rooted in this idea of right and wrong, that writers portray in their stories, and that we interpret in whatever way seems best to us...
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